The Faraday cage was discovered by Scottish scientist Michael Faraday in 1836, following up work done by Benjamin Franklin, Australian National University science communicator Phil Dooley told ABC Radio Perth.

"He came from a very poor background and got very interested in electricity and magnetism and ended up overturning our knowledge of a lot of these things," Dr Dooley said.

"He used a metal tin and found that if you put something inside, and put a charge on the tin, then anything inside the tin was unaffected by that voltage."